Grow Sales AND Profits In Your DTC Business This Holiday Season
It’s Fall! In some parts of the country, leaves are turning bright orange and red and the weather is turning crisp. People are reaching for their scarves, coats, mittens, and pumpkin-spiced everything because they KNOW that snow and ice are just around the corner. Here in Los Angeles, shorts and t-shirts are still the norm, but even we are anticipating the coming blitz, the lights blinking a bright red and green, obnoxious Christmas music piped everywhere you go, the Hanukkah candles appearing on the table…it’s the HOLIDAYS.
Making A Budget and Checking It Twice
Q4 is just around the corner, and we all know what that means – retail’s favorite holidays, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are almost here!
Did you know that according to Statista, US consumers spent $264 billion on eCommerce sales in Q4 last year? And if that’s not bonkers, 24% of consumers say they plan to spend more in Q4 this year than they did last year. That’s a lot of shopping!
As a small business, you desperately want to be a part of the holiday shopping conversation, but it seems almost impossible to compete with the big box stores and the giant online retailers, #amiright? If you slash your prices too low, you may not even make enough money to buy your own family’s holiday gifts. Many business owners think this is okay, though, because you’ll at least sell inventory. Right? WRONG.
There are so many proven ways to promote your product and sell more without setting prices so low that you don’t make the profit you want. Yes, you can continue giving the same moderate discounts you’ve given all year, BUT you can package them in a sexy new way that will appeal to your current customers and attract new ones.
The Strategy
Building a successful Q4 sales and marketing plan isn’t about taking the same product and promoting the heck out of it repeatedly.
It’s about creating sales offers and marketing campaigns that center on your customer, not your product. You can glitz up your product and drop the price 90 percent, but if a customer isn’t shopping for your product, you’re not going to get the sale. And if you do get the sale, your profit margin will tank.
Instead, we want to help you identify and win sales from customers already shopping for items like yours and who are willing to pay a higher price for your product – because they know its value. We’re going to show you how to recognize the shopping behaviors of these highly valued customers, connect them to the right product on the right marketplace, and deliver a seamless experience that they love so that you’ll have them coming back again and again.
Our Q4 strategy can be applied to any product brand selling directly to consumers (DTC). You’ll find the most flexibility if you’re selling DTC like on Shopify or WooCommerce. If you’re selling via a marketplace like Amazon.com or Walmart.com, Steps 1-4 and 6 can still help you create value and drive sales for your business.
6 Step Framework
Step 1: Create a sales and marketing plan template
Step 2: Create your Black Friday Cyber Monday promotion plans
Step 3: Create a December to remember
Step 4: Grow your owned audience in October
Step 5: Explore Corporate & Bulk Sales
Step 6: Create Festive Offers
STEP 1: Create a sales and marketing plan template
The best time to start planning is NOW. Literally, right now. Open a fresh Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel file. Feeling a little old-fashioned? Grab a pen and paper. Across the page, you’re going to create a column for each week of Q4, beginning with October 1 and going for 13 weeks (about 3 months) total. Along the left side of the plan, you’ll need a row to highlight the following components of your strategy:
Holidays & Retail Events – Halloween, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, etc.
Brand Events – Social media holidays and brand campaigns go here.
Competitor Events – Amazon Prime Day October, etc. Take note because these are great opportunities for your own counterprogramming!
Product Releases – Highlight any upcoming product drops and launches (we’ll talk about festive offers in step 6, too)
Promotions – events where you plan to discount the price
Target Audience: The core shopper and behavior you want to reach with the product or offer
Primary Messaging: Your campaign headlines designed to engage
You can add more rows based on the level of detail and complexity in your marketing. Media, messaging, all of it can be added. Make the template as comprehensive and at the level of detail you currently manage your business.
Why It Works
Lay out the full sales period and begin to define what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, and how you’re doing it. By building a calendar plan, you create the flexibility your marketing plan needs to match offers, messaging, and channels to your customer as their shopping behaviors shift throughout the season.
Yup, that’s right – no customer has the same shopping mindset throughout the entire Q4 season. How we shop changes based on the who, what, where, when, why, and how we’re shopping. Think about these shopping mindsets:
Some customers start their holiday shopping in January. FOR THE UPCOMING HOLIDAY IN DECEMBER!
Other customers start their holiday shopping in October. They still have lots of time and plenty of options before the big holidays hit and aren’t even close to breaking out into a cold sweat.
Still others don’t even think about shopping until December 23. In their case, panic at the disco isn’t a rock band, it’s a lifestyle.
And there’s even more – gifts for family members, significant others, close friends, and of course the dreaded company exchange gift – all different gifts and recipients, and all have the option to trigger a different shopping mindset.
STEP 2: Plan Black Friday and Cyber Monday
The next steps are to dive deeper and write out your plans for Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM, for some industry lingo). I recommend planning for each day for Friday – Monday at a minimum. 35% of consumers plan to shop on Cyber Monday, so think about a new offer that stands out from your Black Friday offer and re-engages your customer.
For larger brands with bigger assortments (20+ SKUs), go further and develop your plans to pulse different products and offers during the 9-day holiday. Many of the biggest brands program different offers depending on the day of the holiday week!
Black Friday Week (Mon-Tue)
Black Friday (Wed-Fri)
Black Friday Weekend (Sat-Sun)
Cyber Monday (Mon-Tue)
Why It Works
Most retailers start executing Black Friday messaging in October or the very first week of November at the latest. They want to get their customers hyped up for “amazing deals” and “terrific sales”, often priming customers for purchases they never thought of buying in the first place.
You, as a growing brand, can successfully sell on Black Friday (and Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, for that matter!) without competing on price with big box retailers. Your Black Friday sales offer just needs to be YOUR BRAND’S BEST OFFER OF THE YEAR.
For example, if you offered a 20% discount earlier in the year, consider offering a 30% discount on Black Friday. Or if it was 30%, considering offering 35%. The key is being able to truthfully message to your customers this is the best offer and have them recognize it as well.
My favorite example is this Drunk Elephant. DE almost NEVER has promotions throughout the year. However, as a customer, I know they have 20% off on Black Friday, so I get my credit card primed and ready to buy, buy, buy as soon as the promotion starts.
The strategy works because you aren’t trying to compete against everyone in your category by discounting your products outrageously. Instead, you’re trying to show up on Black Friday with your BEST OFFER to your current (and loyal) customers without eroding too much brand equity.
A Word On Paid Ads
To get the most from BFCM, activate your own marketing channels. Put your owned email subscriber list to work and really focus on your BFCM messaging through your own social media channels and emails.
You can try to use paid ads, but I can promise you it’s going to be expensive. Last year in 2022 CPCs (Costs per Click) increased by as much as 16% over Q4, depending on the retail platform. Not only does CPC go up, but ROAS goes down – it’s the story we already know, consumers are paralyzed by all the options and so are clicking more but converting less, almost 12% lower. What does it all mean? More expensive ads that are converting into sales less often. Oy.
I don’t really like those economics when I consider profitability. I encourage my clients to participate in paid ads to a certain degree because ads are important tactic BUT we think twice before using them over a big holiday weekend.
STEP 3: Create a December to Remember
Once you’ve planned out BFCM, follow the same approach and create your plans for December. There are a few key ideas to remember about December promotions:
Don’t promote the 1st week of December. Customers have shopping fatigue after Black Friday and sales notoriously dip this week. If someone is shopping, they are likely not too price sensitive, so no need to price promote.
Standard and express shipping deadlines – As a DTC business, you will need to know your cutoff dates for delivery in time for Hanukkah, Christmas, or other holidays. Know these dates and communicate them early and often to your customers.
Why It Works
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are BIG events and usually, there is a slowdown of purchases during the first week of December. As I mentioned above, customers are fatigued and recovering from spending so much money.
As we move into the second and third weeks of December, however, these are my favorites! These are the shoppers that are in crunch mode. Shoppers in crunch mode are less price sensitive. At this point, they have the money, they need the gift, and they aren’t going to be looking for bargains – they want to purchase, wrap it, and get it under the tree ASAP. You don’t need to continue deep price discount during these weeks – procrastinators are in full purchasing mode. Instead, offer a moderate price discount and promote value-add services and products like gift wrapping, gift cards, and more.
STEP 4: Grow Your Owned Audience in October
You didn’t think I forgot about October, did you? I find it easier to plan for October with the end in mind. Having planned BFCM and December, you know how you want your business to grow this quarter. Put marketing to work in October to grow your reach and audience that you can then activate for November and December campaigns.
For October, it’s best to brainstorm ideas and campaigns that can grow your social followers and email subscribers. If you can, incentivize your social followers to also subscribe to your email newsletter. Email has a high conversion vs. social, so an email subscriber is more likely to buy from you than a social follower.
Why It Works
In October, the customer is dusting off their holiday shopper mindset and gearing up for the new season upon us. It’s a great time for your brand to engage and be considered as shoppers prepare their lists and check them twice. We’re not worried about conversion rates as much in October – this is all about driving reach and getting into a position to be considered when wallets open and shoppers are ready to buy.
One great tactic for brands with a higher social engagement than email subscribers is to run social posts to promise a first look at holiday deals for followers who sign up for emails. Or, if you plan to run your promotional messages through SMS, encourage social and email followers to sign up for texts. You know from Steps 1-3 which channels you’ll lean into to activate through November and December, so use this time to grow your audience or move your audience from other channels to where you want them to be.
STEP 5: Explore Corporate Sales & Bulk Orders
Spend some time during your planning session to consider if a B2B sales strategy is a fit for your business this season. B2B sales are big business in Q4 as companies are huge gift givers. To determine how your brand is a fit for corporate sales, consider these questions about your business:
Are you selling any of your products B2B today?
Can your current website handle bulk order uploads?
Is there a team member who can provide a white-glove customer service experience and manage these orders from intake through delivery?
If you answered ‘yes’ to the question above, there’s a very good chance B2B sales is a key component of your Q4 sales strategy. Conduct some initial outreach with targeted companies and design a festive offer in October. Once you make initial sales and refine the offer, expand to more B2B clients and personalize outreach through social media DMs, phone, and email.
Why It Works
The holidays aren’t just for friends and families – companies like to give gifts, too. Companies give internally to employees and teams and externally to clients, vendors, potential collaborators, and more. Creative agencies, real estate firms, financial services, and so many more curate service-based companies are a great place to start to build B2B sales in Q4.
Q4 corporate sales will require more of a relationship with the customer and direct selling, but they can be incredibly lucrative for your business and deliver higher profit margins vs. selling to individual customers on your website. This is why personalized outreach is important, as well as having a team member available to manage the client relationship from order through delivery.
If you’ve never sold B2B before, there are a couple of things you can do to get started this season:
Research your current customer email list. Look for addresses that appear to have @businessname (.com, .co, .org) attached. These people probably bought products either for themselves or their company in the past. Now is a good time to re-target them with a corporate sales offer.
Think about your festive product offer. What can you do to take your signature, best-selling item to the next level? Can the product be engraved or personalized in another way? Can you upgrade the packaging without spending a fortune? Can you offer to gift wrap the product and make a fancy gift tag, so the customer doesn’t have to do that extra work? Adding a small upcharge for this service can be a win for you since it saves them from wrapping it themselves!
STEP 6: Plan Festive Offers
This last step is last for a reason. Steps 1 – 5 created opportunities for more sales without having to touch or alter your product. Step 6 is fantastic but does come with some risk of additional costs to make changes to your product or packaging. If you are going to do this, just make sure you’ve reviewed your unit economics first and are confident your business will be profitable by offering new or otherwise differentiated festive products.
First, identify any new limited-edition products (and pricing) that you plan to release during the holiday season. This could be:
Bestselling item with holiday packaging
Advent calendars
Pumpkin-spiced anything or other holiday flavors
For each product, consider what I call giftability. Is the item already in a festive packaging and only needs a bow? Or if the product needs to be wrapped, is this a value-added service you can provide for the customer? The best festive products are the ones that need little to no manipulation after purchase to deliver to the recipient. The more you can provide upgraded packaging or gifting services, the more premium price you can sell to your customers.
Like other product releases and the marketing planning in this guide, you’ll want to plan out each step of the release including target audience, messaging, and owned and paid marketing tactics.
Why It Works
If your products are already or can easily be giftable, then you are primed to make the sale. Think of the husband that’s trying to buy something nice for his wife. He doesn’t want to buy something, only to head back out to fight the crowds to buy tape, wrapping paper, and scissors (because he can never find them in the junk drawer!). Or consider people looking for a white elephant office gift exchange, a Friendsgiving, and more. All these occasions bring in shoppers who are looking for something low maintenance and easily giftable - and your festive offer can be just what they’re looking for.
Putting It All Together
With this guide, I hope it’s clear for you that winning Q4 sales doesn’t have to be a race to the bottom of the pricing barrel. You can continue to hold your brand at its high equity, re-engage existing customers and attract new new-to-brand customers just by showcasing your brand at different times in the holiday season in marketing that appeal to different shopping mindsets.
And while sales and promotion strategies are key to growing a profitable business, please don’t forget to nail the basics of being in-stock, fulfilling orders quickly, and shipping fast. Free shipping is still the top reason consumers buy online, and an easy returns process is important to most shoppers when deciding where to buy from.
Still not sure where to start? Let’s jump on a quick discovery call to see how we can work together and create your winning Q4 strategy and implementation plan. Schedule a call with me today.